


a brighter world beyond

by tardigradeschool



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hiding Medical Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Mentioned Canon Typical Violence, Post Ep 87, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21698284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardigradeschool/pseuds/tardigradeschool
Summary: Caleb is silent on the walk. The others clearly don’t expect him to talk, which is lucky, because he can barely put one foot in front of the other at the moment, let alone formulate a coherent thought.Or, Caleb has a breakdown, and then another, smaller breakdown. It's been a long day.
Relationships: Nott & Caleb Widogast, The Mighty Nein & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 18
Kudos: 514





	a brighter world beyond

**Author's Note:**

> title from "dear wormwood" by the oh hellos, which is the ideal caleb song
> 
> cw: caleb is dissociating as he was for most of the episode and is generally not in a good place

Caleb is silent on the walk. The others clearly don’t expect him to talk, which is lucky, because he can barely put one foot in front of the other at the moment, let alone formulate a coherent thought. He thinks distantly that one of the clerics would probably carry him if he asked, but he doesn’t know who’s watching anymore. There’s still a part of him that would rather die than show vulnerability in front of Trent.

The city is claustrophobic and comforting in turns. He recognizes a bakery as they walk past the academy, the place he and Astrid and Eodwulf used to scamper off to when they got hungry in the middle of the night. He’s not surprised they’re still open, but it’s odd that -- that any of that was real. Down the street, his old favorite bookshop has been reduced to mostly rubble. Time  _ has _ passed. Still. He loves this city. Even as he suppresses nausea, even as his legs shake beneath him and his head pounds.

He doesn’t realize that he’s been blindly following the group until he bumps into Jester when she stops walking. “We’re here,” Nott says at his side, her voice soft and raspy. He realizes abruptly that she’s holding his hand. He’s not sure when she took it.

It takes him another moment after that to process that he knows this building, though he has never been inside it. It was junior faculty housing when he was at the academy, a sturdy old brick building that started as student dormitories. They are a mere block off campus. He grips Nott’s hand through another wave of nausea.

“Apologies that we don’t have anything fancier on hand,” their guide says. “Most of the teachers have been sent off to fight, so this building has been empty for a few months.” He hands Caduceus a ring of keys. “This should let you in to the rooms on the first floor. Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

  
When Caleb blinks, he’s gone. But no one else seems alarmed, so he supposes that the man simply walked away. Beau plucks the keys from Caduceus’s hand and opens the front door.   


He doesn’t realize that he isn’t moving until Nott tugs him gently through the doorway, following the rest of the group down the hall to the living spaces. The room Beau unlocks is plain, furnished only with a bed, a cabinet, and a desk. Caleb recognizes the desk’s design; he had one of the same set in his own room at Soltryce.

“Well, it’s no Xhorhaus,” Jester says after a moment, aiming for levity. Nott elbows her -- in the hip, since it’s where she can reach -- but Jester brushes her off. “They already know we’ve been there, Nott, we don’t have to pretend.”

Normally, Beau would be running down the hallway to find the best room, but it’s clear that she’s intuited what Caleb already knows: every room is identical to this one. Fjord starts to sit down on the bed, then thinks better when he realizes that he’s still covered in gore. 

“I suppose there’s no chance of a hot tub here,” he says, a small laugh in his words.

For some reason, this is the thing that pulls words out of Caleb. “There will be. Showers,” he says, voice still rough. “Somewhere. Probably in the basement.” He regrets it immediately, because now all of them are looking at him instead of politely looking away. 

“Good to know,” Fjord says, after a pause that is slightly too long. Then, “Caleb? Are you alright?” After another long pause, he huffs at himself. “I know it’s a stupid question.”

“Nein,” Caleb says, and it makes him want to laugh, but he knows that any laugh that comes out of his body now will be more concerning than anything he could say, and he would rather disappear from the prime material plane than make any of them look more scared of him or for him than they already do. 

“Fair enough,” Caduceus says, in his brisk way that means he can tell asking Caleb more questions isn’t going to help. “I saw a stove in the common area. I’ll see what I can do for dinner.”

“Showers, anyone?” Fjord says, and starts to move towards the door. Beau shifts as if to follow him, and Caleb feels a surge of fear so intense that for a moment he can’t breathe.

“Wait,” he says, and the word comes out harsher than he means it to. Everyone turns back. “Ah. Please.” He swallows, though he’s got more blood than saliva in his mouth. “Please. Can we not -- separate.”

“Sure,” Jester says, in that soft, anxious way of hers that he hates himself for causing. “We’ve all bathed together before, I don’t see why we can’t shower together.”

“Dinner can wait,” Caduceus agrees. “I’ll make something nice.” Caleb doesn’t have the heart to tell him that there’s no way he can keep down food right now. The others will still need to eat.

Everyone takes their weapons with them, and Caleb is glad he doesn’t have to spend more words on asking for that too. He doesn’t feel safe, will never feel safe, but they need to be able to defend themselves. Just in case. The showers are identical to the ones that were in his dorm. There are a handful of stalls for the shy, and then a dozen arranged in an open semicircle. It takes a little fiddling for everyone to figure out the temperature mechanism -- only Jester has seen this enchantment before, and Caduceus has never even heard of them -- but everyone begins stripping while the water warms up.

They’ve all seen each other naked before, and at this point there isn’t even much to joke about. Yasha winces at the blood all over Beau, and Beau just shrugs at her. “It’s all dry,” she tells her.

Beside Caleb, Nott wrestles her dress over her head and stands with her arms crossed in just her underwear. “Why is it weirder when we’re all standing up?” she asks.

“There’s no sitting water to hide in, that’s why,” Fjord says. He keeps his boxers on too, although Yasha, Caduceus, and Beau are already in the nude. Jester has stepped under the water in her underdress, probably more to get the blood out of it than for modesty’s sake.

Caleb lets them discuss amongst themselves as he turns away to undress, unbuttoning his clothes with numb fingers. He’s still so far outside of his head that it takes him a moment to notice that everyone is staring when he turns back to face them in only his long johns.

“Caleb,” Jester says softly. “You didn’t say you were still hurt so badly.”

He blinks at her. “We all are,” he says, which is true. Fjord has brutally dark bruises all down his neck and chest, and beside him Caduceus is calmly cleaning blood out of his fur. The water passing through Jester’s hair is pink when it washes down her body, and he hadn’t even realized that she had a head wound. Beau has a new scar that still looks angry and half healed, nearly bisecting her from collarbone to navel. 

When he looks down at himself, the tooth marks down his chest hardly seem so bad. But he is the only one still bleeding, and he supposes that that isn’t good. 

“You shouldn’t hide these things from us,” Jester says, sounding upset now. She squeezes the excess water out of her hair and comes over to poke at him, her cool hands too gentle. He doesn’t even have the energy to flinch. 

“I was not… trying to,” he says. Caduceus comes over too, and he wants to disappear, would like  _ anything  _ better than to be the center of attention right now. “I did not, ah. Feel it. Really.” It hurts more now that he can see them, jagged punctures in his chest; the way (the thing that used to be) Obann’s teeth scraped against a few of his ribs will be difficult to forget. 

“Shock is a hell of a drug,” Caduceus says, and Caleb is terribly, disgustingly grateful for how even his voice is. “I don’t have much left, but --” He reaches out and touches Caleb on the shoulder, and the wounds close over into barely-sealed scars, the pain fading to a dull, hot ache. “Don’t do anything strenuous tonight, they might open up again.”

Jester is still chewing on her lip, and then she reaches out and heals him as well, just a little. The aching feeling fades further, and Caleb feels suddenly very dizzy. He doesn’t realize he’s swaying until Caduceus takes his arm and sits him down on the tile floor, his back against the wall. “Easy,” he says.

“What did you do?” Nott demands, a little too loudly, crouching beside him. 

“The pain can be a focus point to keep going,” Caduceus says evenly. “Try and breathe nice and even, Mr. Caleb, if you can.”

Caleb makes a sort of strangled noise that is a laugh and a sob all at once. Nott clutches his hand, and the prick of her claws against his skin is the first thing that’s felt real in about a day. “This is absurd,” he says, the words coming from a nowhere place inside him that is certainly not his brain. 

“You’re not wrong,” Beau says. 

“I want this shit off of me,” he says, the first articulate thought he’s had in a while. The numbness has given way to a sort of manic need, a momentary rush of clarity. He tries to twist himself up and turn on the shower, but Caduceus reaches up calmly and does it himself. Freezing water sprays down on him, as well and Caduceus and Nott on either side of him. She shrieks, jumping back.

“Sorry,” Caduceus says, not sounding all that sorry. 

“Oh, Nott,” Caleb says, and then he actually does laugh until tears run down his cheeks, and the only way he can tell them from the shower water is how hot they are. It’s a pathetic, wheezing thing, but at least it clears the way in his throat for more words. “I am sorry. I am sorry,” and he means for everything.

“It’s actually not as bad like this,” Nott says, sticking a foot into the spray. “It’s kinda like rain.”

Caleb holds out a hand, and she takes it, and then he drags her in, pulling her tight against his chest. She squeaks at the temperature of the water, but clutches him back, her little body warm and alive against him. Caduceus smiles faintly, and backs up to his own warm shower beside Fjord.

“I do not know what happens now,” Caleb says. “He -- he saw me, and he did not kill me. I am sure he will eventually, but --”

“Don’t say that,” Jester says fiercely. “We’ll kill him first.”

“He’s probably listening,” Fjord says, and she waves him off.

“I don’t care if he knows I want to kill him,” she says dismissively. “He won’t touch you, Caleb. I won’t let him.”

“Yeah, he probably already figures we hate him,” Beau says. “Fuck that guy.” She raises her voice; it echoes in the tiled space. “Fuck you, Trent Ikithon!”

It should, by all means, make Caleb’s chest close up with panic again. But the buzz of fear has faded now into a kind of dazed inevitability. Trent knows he is alive, and where he is. Perhaps he will send Astrid or Eodwulf or another one of his fucked up little soldiers tonight, and kill Caleb when he still has no spells left. Caleb would not put it past him. But there is nothing to be done about it now. The panic will come back later, he knows. He knows himself well enough to know he’ll wake up tonight with well-earned paranoia clawing inside his chest and recheck every safety measure over and over and over. But now -- there is simply nothing more to do.

Nott picks her head up to look at him, her wet bangs flattened to her head. “Caleb?” she says. Her pupils expand as she looks at him, and he actually manages a long moment of eye contact. “Promise you won’t run away in the night?”

“Nott,” he says, and there is so much he doesn’t know how to say. He is in the city he loves with the people he loves, and it would be a privilege to die here, beside them. And besides, there would be no point in running, now that Trent knows these people are his associates. Friends. Family. It would be purely selfish, and Caleb realizes to his own surprise that he never even considered it. There is quite literally nothing he can do except protect them from this madness as best he can as they embark on something as monumentally stupid as trying to end the war.

He takes her little hands, and clasps them between his. He’s a little cleaner now, the water still washing down over them, and the cold water has made his skin raw in a way that is oddly grounding. “I promise,” he says, and to his surprise -- the words are almost easy.


End file.
